The Reserve Bank is interested in expectations of the official cash rate that are held by financial market participants. In this article we discuss two formal methods by which the Bank measures these expectations; a direct survey of market surveys, and extracting OCR expectations indirectly from...

This article explains the concept of the yield curve, the pattern of interest rates by their time to maturity, and how that concept helps to provide some perspective on the multitude of different interest rates that exist in modern economies. The dominance of macroeconomic influences on the...

The article explores the role of financial intermediation in the monetary transmission mechanism. It discusses how and why shocks that affect lenders' willingness to lend can have an impact on economic activity, and why this needs to be factored into analyses of the interaction of monetary...

This article examines explanations for the recent performance of the United States economy. We examine both `New Economy' and other more conventional explanations. The second objective is to see whether `New Economy' factors have had an impact on the New Zealand economy.